Fading Away
by miss-chiefmanaged13
Summary: Sybill Trelawney's prediction from her first year of teaching at Hogwarts comes true and she considers whether the Sight is a blessing or a curse.


Sybill's hand shook as she took a sip of tea, forcing the jasmine flavor to calm down her nerves. Her heart raced but she refused to draw her gaze away from the tea. She must stay calm, must not frighten this poor girl – this poor, poor girl.

"Professor?" the young woman before her asked softly. "Are you all right?"

Sybill looked sharply at the redhead, meeting her eyes for a moment. Those eyes – soft, green, and intelligent. She didn't want to lie to those eyes, but…

"Of course, my dear. You don't need to worry at all – the Sight often works in mysterious ways…I must have been prophesying about far, far in the future. After all," she continued, scrambling to create some reasoning for her trance earlier, "we all will be returned to star dust at some point…we all – " she trailed off, realizing that Lily was viewing her skeptically.

"We all will die," the girl finished flatly, an eyebrow raised.

With a flourish of her hands to further attempt to distract the girl, Sibyll concluded, "Precisely."

_ Please, my dear, don't over think it – just…just let it go_.

Lily sat, watching Sibyll in silence. After a long moment, the girl raised her teacup to her lips before placing it back firmly upon a silk draped table. "Professor, I don't want to overstep, but this doesn't – this doesn't seem quite right to me."

"What – whatever do you mean?" Sybill faltered, retreating to her teacup to flee from the tension and the scrutiny of those eyes.

"Well, please don't be offended by this, but this seemed like an actual prediction to me. It felt different from what you usually do."

Sybill's eyes widened exponentially. "And what do you think I usually do, dear?"

Lily looked down, hoping not to offend her professor. "I think you usually put on a good show. This, though – we were frightened, Professor."

Sybill knew that her student was right. It had happened before and she recognized the feeling – that sweeping sensation of numbness overtaking her body before she was lost to the Sight, to the power flowing through her. The strange place she went to in the middle of a prediction – floating through darkness but seeing faces at the same time, faces stretched into screams as she saw their deaths flash before her eyes, heard their final pleas for help, felt their final breaths upon her throat. The feeling when she arrived back in reality, where everything felt almost too solid, too _real_.

She had blacked out in the middle of her lecture on the properties of tanzanite in gazing and been transported to that place, then torn away before she had the chance to hear what the voices were saying, before she could actually help them. As a Seer, she felt helpless most of the time when her powers consumed her. Those poor people were just out of reach, brushing her fingertips before she could pull them to her and stop their fates from coming to pass. She had been ripped away from the one thing she was able to do _right_ in this world, from the possibility of helping, and returned to her thick-aired classroom.

The students had been staring openly. Lily, perched upon a puff next to her curly haired best friend, looked as though her eyebrows were about to disappear into that red hair of hers. There was a tense moment where Sybill felt intensely uncomfortable and vulnerable, the sixth-years obviously wondering what had happened to their teacher. James and Sirius, on the opposite side of the room, finally broke the silence and burst into laughter. Lily shot them a dark look and began ferociously scribbling on her parchment, remaining to speak to Sybil after the terse class had finished.

Lily now rummaged in her bag, pulling out her notes from the class and sliding them across the table to Sybill.

At the top of the page was a rough sketch of tanzanite, arrows pointing to certain hues in the surface that signified life events when the gem was cast correctly. The notes shifted halfway down the page, though, from careful cursive to a scrawl.

_A steel flower and a stag will collide and wither, but their child will be stronger than either and will face the snake_.

Sybill did not know why, but there was a dull ache in her mind, a voice chanting, "She was born to die, born to die - she'll die, she'll die…she must". Sybill tore her eyes from the paper.

"This is it?" she inquired harshly, her eyes snapping to Lily. The girl nodded. "Forget about this, Miss Evans. Put it out of your mind – you must." Sybill's hands were shaking again as she thrust the parchment towards Lily. "Take it and go. Never speak of this."

Lily gathered her books and her bag hurriedly and stumbled out of the room, clearly shaken.

Sybill remained in the room, resting on a puff. She drew her knees to her chest and a ragged sob tore through her chest.

_I can't help – I can never help, never __**do**__ anything. I'm useless – all I can do is see and it taunts me, it's just out of reach but I just sit here and fade with my impotence._

And she did fade. She faded for the next two years as she watched her students grow up, as she saw Lily and James grow closer – she had known about James being an Animagus, but somehow she had clung to some hope that he was not the stag. She watched as they collided, watched as they fell into one another, deeper and deeper in love. She faded until one day in the middle of Lily's and James's seventh year when she stood before a gargoyle on the third floor.

"Blue riband," she said softly, wondering too late whether she should approach Dumbledore with this or keep it to herself.

The gargoyle swung open and she entered Dumbledore's circular office, filled with books from floor to ceiling. The wizard sat at his desk, his brows knit as he leaned away from parchment.

Sybill drew closer and subtlely stole a look at the parchment – all she read was the phrase "Tom Riddle" before Dumbledore raised an eyebrow and broke her concentration. "Yes, Sybill? I trust you haven't had too many issues this year? I know your first year was challenging, but I have heard wonderful reviews of your second so far."

"Yes – well," she faltered, trying to avoid eye contact. "Professor Dumbledore, I have something I failed to mention to you last year…"

It all came tumbling out. Her prophecy, her conviction that it meant that Lily and James would die, her fear and her self-loathing at her inability to do anything but watch as everything rotted around her. Dumbledore sat throughout the outpour of everything, his face impossible to read. After everything had been explained, Sybill watched Dumbledore tremulously, waiting for his reaction.

"That will be all, Sybill. Thank you," Dumbledore said carefully, his light blue eyes icy.

Sybill felt her heart begin to race. "Professor, but you must have listened to me, you must have heard me! These children…they are in danger, Professor, and I'm – I'm scared for them. I don't know what to do! I can't just sit here and – and not do anything again!"

"Sybill. Please. That will be all. Escort yourself out," Dumbledore concluded, his voice with a softer tone now. He picked up the parchment again, staring at it blankly – Sybill couldn't help wondering who Tom Riddle was that he was more important than the lives of Dumbledore's Head Boy and Girl.

She turned and wandered from the room, walking in a daze to her tower, where she barely was able to climb the wispy ladder before collapsing on a cushion again.

_I can never change any of it. It's in my head and I can see it all about to happen, but I'm on the outside – useless._


End file.
